Thursday, June 11, 2009

Canada's Anti-terrorism Act is in the House!

In 2007, certain provisions of Canada's Anti-terrorism Act - preventative arrest and confinement without trial and being forced to testify in secret hearings based only on suspicion - were considered so dangerous to human rights and freedoms - by everyone but the Cons - that the Libs, NDP and Bloc voted to allow them to 'sunset'.

The Cons Bill C-19 currently being debated in the HoC seeks to bring them back, albeit with certain new safeguards and protective provisions, but still allowing 12 months of detention without trial on the mere suspicion of being involved in a terrorist activity.

"The members opposite talk about protective provisions in this bill. Again, let us talk about the case of Mohamed Harkat. All those provisions and protections were in the legislation then. There was judicial oversight. There were court-appointed defence counsel for him called special advocates. There were court orders issued to CSIS to produce information to his lawyers. Did that help? Tell that to Mr. Harkat. He is the victim of a security certificate that has been in place for years, and now we find out it was probably because there was some witness testifying against him in secret and it turns out he had no credibility."

Bloc MP Thierry St-Cyr :

"Even when we pass good laws that call on the government to defend and protect people's freedoms, the government still finds a way to violate people's rights. Mr. Abdelrazik's case is a good example. The court has ordered the government to respect this Canadian citizen's rights, but the government says that it could not care less about the law and the court ruling, and that it will not act in accordance with either.If we were to wind up with laws that actually do attack our individual rights and freedoms, this government, which does not even respect existing laws, would take advantage of the situation to openly attack our civil liberties."

Exactly.And will the definition of what constitutes 'terrorism' gradually evolve to include protesters?The Libs will be voting for it on second reading regardless, saying they hope to fine tune it in committee.Bloc and NDP vehemently against..